A version of this story originally appeared in EmmyWrap: Movies/Miniseries
Implacable, coldly efficient and apparently devoid of anything resembling conscience or humanity, the assassin played by Billy Bob Thornton in FX’s “Fargo” miniseries is one of the most vivid, fearsome and blackly humorous villains on current TV.
The miniseries ends on Tuesday night after 10 dark, perverse and funny episodes that nicely captured the tone of the wonderfully twisted 1996 Coen brothers movie that inspired it. Thornton’s Lorne Malvo showed up in the first episode to quietly wreak havoc, setting in motion a series of violent (but also comic) misadventures set in the frigid environs of Bemidji, Minn — and after a startling jump of one year in Episode 8, he returned with a different look for what seems to be an inevitable showdown with Martin Freeman’s Lester Nygaard.